quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- ineffable




- ineffable: [15] Ineffable literally means ‘that cannot be spoken’. Its ultimate source was the Latin verb fārī ‘speak’, which has also given English fable, fame, fate, etc. Addition of the prefix ex- ‘out’ produced effārī ‘speak out’, from which the adjective ineffābilis was derived. In 19th-century English the word was used as a plural noun, like unmentionables, as a humorous euphemism for ‘trousers’ or ‘nether garments’: ‘shoes off, ineffables tucked up’, William Cory, Letters and Journals 1867.
=> fable, fame, fate - tuck (v.)




- late 14c., "to pull or gather up," earlier "to pluck, stretch" (implied in tucker "one who finishes clothes by stretching them on tenters, late 13c. as a surname), probably from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch tucken "pull up, draw up, tug" (cognate with Old English tucian "mistreat, torment," and related to Old English togian "to pull," German zucken; see tow (v.)). Sense of "thrust into a snug place" is first recorded 1580s. Slang meaning "to consume, swallow, put into one's stomach" is recorded from 1784. Related: Tucked; tucking.
- tucker (v.)




- "to tire, weary," 1833, New England slang, of uncertain origin, perhaps from tucked (past participle of tuck (v.)), which had, in reference to dogs, a slang sense of "exhausted, underfed." Especially with out. Related: Tuckered; tuckering.